I Am Grey

by Jane Washington

  “Put the phone down, Mika, and go to sleep.”

  “Okay,” I muttered. “Bye.”

  I felt stupid. I slapped the cell down onto the bedside table and stared at the lit-up screen, waiting for the numbers to stop counting up, to stop logging the length of the call that he didn’t want to be on. They looked so mocking to me. He couldn’t even stand to talk to me for more than two minutes and fifteen seconds. I didn’t blame him; not after the way I had acted with him earlier.

  He was insane, there was no doubt in my mind about that … but I had lashed out and treated him badly, even though he had tried to help me in his own, insane way.

  Two minutes and twenty seconds.

  Two minutes and twenty-one seconds.

  Two minutes and twenty-five seconds.

  Two minutes and thirty seconds.

  Three minutes and five seconds.

  Five minutes and ten seconds

  I stared at the numbers until they grew blurry. The tears were finally escaping, slipping down my cheeks and falling into the crease between my lips. I could taste them; they only seemed to make the burn at the back of my throat worse.

  He wasn’t hanging up.

  He wasn’t abandoning me.

  I pulled my clothes off and slipped on a sweatshirt, climbing between the sheets.

  Ten minutes and forty-five seconds.

  He hadn’t moved or said a word in ten minutes. I was sure of that—it was so quiet inside the RV that I would have heard the sound from my phone. I pulled the sheets up to my chin and curled into myself, wincing at the uncomfortable pull in my leg.

  I had hurt myself.

  But he was staying with me.

  He wasn’t going to let me do it again.

  13

  Abduction

  When I woke up the next day, Nicholai had ended the call. He had stayed for five hours and thirty-five minutes, and I felt free of panic for the first time in days. I hadn’t even realised that it had been panic clouding up the back of my mind until I woke up, glanced at my phone, and felt the absence of the heavy emotion weighing me down. My leg wasn’t going to let me forget, though. It was mottled blue and black, tiny little splotches spreading out like a disease. I checked my knuckles, almost expecting to find matching bruises there, but the skin was unmarked, the evidence wiped away. I might have fallen down the stairs, except that I didn’t have any stairs. I could have walked into a post. A tree stump. Had something fall on me. Maybe the RV’s awning could have fallen down and landed on my leg while I sat beneath it?

  Yes, that was better.

  I rolled out of bed, pulled on one of my usual dresses for school, and contemplated the inside of my fridge. Three cartons of milk, a few apples rolling around loosely, and the ingredients for several different types of sandwich. There was also cereal in one of the cupboards, and I was pretty sure that I had picked up popcorn sometime last week, but I couldn’t remember why.

  I poured a glass of milk, made a sandwich for school, and left the RV without bothering to lock it up, making my way to the train tracks. I was late for school, but I was sure that I could make it if I ran. I didn’t even bat an eye at the sight of Duke’s trailer, looking just the same as it always had. I wasn’t surprised that Trip hadn’t burnt it down. Maybe covering it in gasoline had been his real message, and he had just been trying to frighten me. Or maybe he had changed his mind.

  I didn’t really care.

  I sat at the back of the room for each of my classes, ignoring the usual whispers that gathered about me. Thanksgiving was coming up already, and everyone seemed to be excited about it. It made me feel sick, so I ignored that, too.

  I sat by the fence bordering the parking lot for lunch, even though I knew that Jean would be looking for me. Marcus had passed me a note during Chemistry to tell me as much, after I had moved from my usual spot beside him, to one alone at the back of the room. I didn’t want to ignore Marcus, or hide from Jean, but I wanted even less to hear what they would have to say about my behaviour. Maybe Jean would ask me to leave the track team, because it was obvious that I wasn’t training in a very healthy way—or maybe they would both get angry at me for the way I had treated their mother. It would only be fair. I was a terrible person. I didn’t deserve friends like them.

  I managed to survive the day without a confrontation by slipping out of last period a few minutes early and following the train tracks back to Summer Estate. I wished that the weekend would pass in the time it took me to get there, so that I could turn around and go straight back, ready for Monday. Nicholai would be there … but would I go to see him? So much had changed. Because of me. Because of him. Both of us had fucked up somehow, but he had still been there for me.

  He was right in what he had said at the lighthouse: he was crossing lines by giving me what I needed. It wasn’t okay for me to be finding out his number and calling him at night, and it wasn’t okay for him to stay with me the way he had. If any of the parents or teachers found out, he would be fired from the school immediately—and if he was fired from the school, he would probably be fired from whatever else he was involved in at the clinic he worked at, or Stanford. It would ruin his life.

  He wouldn’t go to jail, at least, because I was over the age of sixteen … but what kind of consolation was that? He probably wouldn’t go to jail for statutory rape.

  I tried to put it from my mind that night, after unplugging my phone and shoving it back into the cutlery drawer. I tried to put it from my mind the next morning too, as I dragged my homework out and spent the entire day studying more than was even necessary to pass my subjects. By Saturday night, I was desperate for any kind of distraction from my own thoughts, so the knock on my door was—for once—a relief.

  I slipped out from behind the table and pulled the door open, surprised to see Marcus and Jean standing there, bags of takeout in their arms.

  “Hope you don’t mind.” Jean managed to look apologetic, though there was a spark of something like hurt in her eyes. “Mom told us where you live.”

  “We brought movies,” Marcus announced, his tone much lighter than Jean’s. He extended his arm, displaying the laptop bag hanging from his shoulder.

  I stepped back and waved them inside awkwardly. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just motioned the takeout bags. “You brought food?”

  “Sure did,” Marcus continued in his cheery tone. “Dad bought a crepe-maker for the shop, so I’ve been experimenting. I wasn’t sure if you were a vegetarian or anything so I made steak and mushroom with a balsamic glaze; and spinach, artichoke and brie with a sweet honey sauce. Dessert is a caramelised apple and cinnamon parcel—it’s like a normal crepe, but you tie it up into a little parcel. I found some sugar string and—”

  “We get it,” Jean interrupted, wrangling the bags off him and putting them on the table. “You like food.”

  Marcus flushed, the pink tinge spreading up over his neck and cheeks.

  “That’s—um …” I struggled to find something encouraging to say. “The steak one sounds good. I like crepes.”

  His grin spread out, chasing the pink away, and he turned to the table, beginning to pull out the containers. “Can you grab some plates for me?”

  I exchanged a look with Jean, who rolled her eyes. She seemed to be relaxing. I pulled out everything we would need, piling it onto the table in front of Marcus before we all sat down to eat. Or, I had assumed that we were all sitting down to eat. Jean just pushed her crepe around on the plate, looking like she had something to say, but was holding herself back. Eventually, Marcus asked her if she was going to eat anything, before swapping his empty plate for her full one. After dinner, we all moved to the back of the u-shaped couch and Marcus set up his laptop to play a movie.

  Star Wars: A New Hope.

  I snorted and turned my glare on Marcus, who had retained his annoyingly jovial attitude right throughout dinner.

  “What?” He nudged me with his shoulder. “I thought you’d like to watch all the
Star Wars movies from start to finish, in the order they were released.”

  “Sure,” I said dryly. “We have ten hours free, don’t we?”

  “Actually it’s fifteen hours and forty-six minutes,” Jean corrected me. She was smirking. “And we’ll sit here, watching Star Wars movie after Star Wars movie—including The Phantom Menace—until you agree to come and stay with us. Just until the end of Thanksgiving. Two weeks, tops.”

  “I don’t think your mom would—” I started, but Marcus slapped a finger over my mouth, cutting the words off.

  “It was her idea,” Jean told me. “Well, not the blackmail, but she asked us if we’d like to invite you over.”

  I pushed Marcus’s finger away. “That was before—”

  He re-applied his finger, grinning.

  “Last night,” Jean told me. “She asked us only last night. We know she came here to talk to you. She said that you sent her away—but she also said that you needed someone, that she didn’t want you to be alone for the holidays.”

  I finally stopped trying to push Marcus away, my hands falling back into my lap. He took the finger away himself, pleased with my shock.

  “She did?” I asked, dumbly. “She said that?”

  In answer, Marcus reached over the table and closed his laptop. “Great. Now that it’s settled, we can watch this at home. I’ll go wait in the car.”

  He packed up his things and left without another word. I didn’t move an inch, but Jean slid out from behind the table and started gathering up the homework books that I had set aside when they knocked.

  “You’ll need these,” she said gently, tipping them into my bag and moving past the curtain that sectioned off the bedroom.

  I blinked in shock as the material fell closed behind her, and then I got up and followed, sitting on the edge of the bed as she pulled things from my cupboard. She found a duffel folded up beneath my sandals and a pair of sneakers, and she filled it with the same dresses that I wore daily. She added in panties, bras, a jacket, my bag of toiletries for the amenities block, and my hairbrush.

  “Where’s your phone?” she asked, glancing around.

  I pointed to the kitchen and she zipped my duffel, hoisting it over her shoulder and moving into the main section of the RV. I watched her go … and then I watched as the curtain fell back into place, separating us. I should have stood and retrieved my phone for her: she would force us to exchange numbers, and I would realise that I had a new friend whether I wanted one or not. Whether I deserved one or not.

  I should have stood, but I couldn’t move.

  My body was frozen, my head turning slowly so that I could seek out the little porthole window.

  Six feet of possibility.

  “Grey?” The curtain pulled back, Jean’s face appearing in the opening. I could see her from my peripheral vision, but I couldn’t face her.

  I couldn’t move.

  “Mika?” She moved closer, and I thought that her hands were empty now. She must have left the duffel in the kitchen. “If you want us to leave you alone, all you have to do is ask. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you wanted our help, even though you’d never admit it.”

  “You’re not going to kick me off the team?” I asked the window.

  “Mom agreed not to notify the school if you promised to train with me from now on.”

  I blinked at the window. I wanted to be shocked or angry that Alicia was interfering in my life, but I was comfortably numb once again.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “I like running with you.”

  “I like running with you, too.” Jean sat down on the bed beside me, turning to look out of the window with me.

  There was nothing to examine—just the trees—but she didn’t seem to mind.

  “What does it remind you of?” I asked.

  “A ship.” There was a hint of annoyance in her voice. “One of those little ship cabins. I almost expected to see the ocean.”

  “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

  “Unnerving.”

  I shifted, turning to face her instead. Jean had always seemed to understand me. She had always wanted to understand me—and that was more than anyone had wanted in what felt like a very long time.

  “I’ll come and stay at yours,” I told her. “Thanks for inviting me.”

  She laughed, her eyes flicking to the curtain. “This is more like a kidnapping, but it’s good to know that if anyone abducts you in the near future, you won’t forget your manners.”

  14

  Phantom Menace

  I had assumed that Marcus didn’t actually want to watch Star Wars—since he had used it as a blackmailing technique—but most of Saturday night and all of Sunday was spent in the den, crawling our way through the movies. I wasn’t really paying attention, but at the end of each instalment, Marcus and Smith launched into a new debate about which was the best Star Wars film, so I didn’t want to risk being thrown out by asking to skip any of them.

  Not that I had anything better to do.

  Alicia was giving me space, and Jean had retreated back into herself. It wasn’t an uncomfortable environment—Smith asked too many intrusive questions for me to feel unwelcome at any point, and I was beginning to realise that Marcus’s forced joviality wasn’t really forced at all. He was genuinely happy all the time.

  I slept on the floor of Jean’s room, where Alicia had set out a mattress. Marcus had the room next door, while Smith had the smallest room beside the main bedroom. He had told me that it used to be a walk-in closet, but they had put a door on it so that he could share Alicia’s bathroom, while Marcus and Jean shared the other bathroom. He said he didn’t mind the lack of space, because he was going to take over Marcus’s bedroom when Marcus moved in with his dad.

  It went quiet after that, and I wasn’t brave enough to bring it up to Jean while I slept on the floor of her room. I could have brought it up the next day, on the way to school, but there was a sick feeling low in my stomach, distracting me.

  I was nervous.

  The feeling plagued me all through first period and into the second. It grew worse until lunch, when I walked on auto-pilot to Nicholai’s office. It was locked, the lights turned off. I back-tracked down the hall, stopping beside the receptionist’s desk.

  “Where’s Mr. Fell?” I asked.

  She was on the phone—I hadn’t noticed. She held up a finger and continued speaking quietly as I shifted from foot to foot. The nervous feeling was descending into panic. I could feel it digging into me, climbing and clawing its way up my body.

  “Miss Grey.” The receptionist drew my attention back to her face. She had returned the phone to its cradle. “You weren’t notified about Mr. Fell?”

  I had no idea what she was talking about: I shook my head to indicate as much.

  She frowned and clicked at a few things on her computer. “Oh—you weren’t scheduled in. I suppose he stopped scheduling your appointments once you started to come in regularl—” She cut herself off, pulling back from the screen.

  I could see her shutting down, could read past the pursing of her lips. She was embarrassed, or she was afraid that she was embarrassing me.

  “He’s not coming in today?” I prompted her. My voice was a croak.

  She smiled, her transformation into a cool-faced professional complete. I glanced at her name-badge. Helen. She had her hair up in bun, and she was wearing pumpkin-stud earrings. The other receptionist glanced over noisily, shattering the façade of careful privacy that Helen had momentarily laboured over.

  “Mr. Fell no longer works at the school,” Helen told me calmly. “We will have a substitute councillor coming in tomorrow, to cover any emergencies before the holiday. Would you like me to schedule an appointment?”

  I stared at her. The panic grew hot, boiling up and applying heat to every solid thing that I had believed in. All the steel beams I had built up around me—an infrastructure I hadn’t even noticed until now—were beginning to fail. The molten metal dribble
d, and my safe house collapsed.

  “He quit?” My voice sounded so far away, almost completely drowned out by the pounding of blood in my ears.

  Helen cut me a sharp look. “I said that he no longer works at the school. I’m sorry, Miss Grey, but I’m not permitted to discuss the affairs of the other faculty members with the students of the school.”

  The affairs. It was almost funny, the wording that she had chosen. Or it would have been funny, if I wasn’t sure that liquid steel was now running into my bloodstream, poisoning me with hysteria as I stood there quietly, staring at the receptionist. I suddenly felt so alone, but it was a strange kind of ‘alone’. The kind that puts you in a box, with thin glass walls all around you. You can still see everyone; you can hear their muffled voices, but you will be stopped if you try to reach out to them. It was a fragile, transparent kind of loneliness.

  I backed away from the desk and quickly turned for the door, pushing my way outside. I was surrounded by glass, but I was a ticking explosive, and no amount of glass would contain what threatened to spill out of me. I walked out to the parking lot and started toward the train tracks before pulling up short. I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t disappear. There were people who would worry if I did. That was a strange realisation. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, or how I felt about it.

  I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, searching for Jean’s contact. She had programmed in hers, Marcus’s, and Alicia’s numbers, texting each of them from my phone so that they would be able to contact me. It felt so accountable. I quickly wrote her a text, letting her know that I was going to hang out with Duke, and then I started walking again.

  She wouldn’t be happy, but at least I wasn’t disappearing. Give and take. Accountability. Sort of.

  I started running as soon as I hit the tracks, and I didn’t slow down until I was standing in front of Duke’s trailer. I was doubled over, my hands on my knees, gasping in air. I had outrun the notion of accountability with every ounce of ability that I had. The door propped open after a few minutes and Duke appeared, his arms crossed over a black tank. He watched me, his dark eyes blank.